10/27/2013

Thousands of Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don’t like what they see.

These middle-class consumers are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market. Their rates are rising in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years.

Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama’s signature legislation.

Here’s a representative example:

Fullerton resident Jennifer Harris thought she had a great deal, paying $98 a month for an individual plan through Health Net Inc. She got a rude surprise this month when the company said it would cancel her policy at the end of this year. Her current plan does not conform with the new federal rules, which require more generous levels of coverage.

Now Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don’t qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.

“It doesn’t seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else,” said Harris, who is three months pregnant. “This increase is simply not affordable.”

Ms. Harris. They call it the “Affordable Care Act.” And you’re trying to suggest it’s not affordable? Are you calling the Democrats who named this bill and passed it . . . liars?

Remember: if you like your health care plan, Ms. Harris, you can keep it. It will just be more expensive, with a higher deductible. But don’t worry! That’s because the federal government is deciding what has to be in your plan, and your new plan is chock-full of neato new benefits! None of which you are actually going to need, but that’s not the point, Ms. Harris . . .

But this is my favorite part:

[M]iddle-income consumers face an estimated 30% rate increase, on average, in California due to several factors tied to the healthcare law.

Some may elect to go without coverage if they feel prices are too high. Penalties for opting out are very small initially. Defections could cause rates to skyrocket if a diverse mix of people don’t sign up for health insurance.

Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.

“She said, ‘I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,’” Kehaly said.

Yeah. Well, that’s kinda how it works with a lot of government programs, my anonymous friend.

PATTERICO MOUNTS SOAPBOX — GINGERLY, OF COURSE, AS HE IS IN FACT GETTING OLDER: This is one of the reasons I’d like to see withholding ended. I argued for this in January 2004 (wow, saying that makes me feel a little old, just like mounting this soapbox did):

You want the cure for big government?

No more withholding.

As it is, people don’t feel as though the money that is being withheld is really theirs. It’s like they never got it in the first place — because they didn’t.

Under my regime, it wouldn’t be that way.

Under my regime, every pay period you would personally set aside the amount of money you will need to save up for the eventual tax bill. Come April 15, you would take out your checkbook and write a huge check to the federal government — for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars.

You think you might start thinking twice about what they’re doing with your money then?

Today, I would add one other suggestion: a requirement that the government send taxpayers an itemized bill showing the breakdown of what they owe and what the money is going for.

After all, generally we decide whether a good or service is “worth it” when we fork over the money. If the money comes pre-forked, and we’re never told how much we are paying for what, how can we make an informed decision about value? At that point, the government service feels like it’s free, even though, on an intellectual level, we know it isn’t. “I supported [insert name of government program or agency here] until I found out how much I was paying for it” would be a very common phrase — if we sent out itemized bills and did away with withholding.

The downside, of course, is that we would probably collect a lot less in taxes. The upside? The People would demand that we spend a lot less.

On balance, I think it would be better.

People are generally “all for” more government services until they find out they are paying for them.

t that point, the government service feels like it’s free, even though, on an intellectual level, we know it isn’t.

I don’t know if that’s entirely true. I know people who don’t seem to connect their tax refund to the fact that money was taken out of their income. Almost like they don’t know where that money is coming from, they just know the check says US Treasury. They treat it as if they made x from their jobs and then got y from the government.

I can’t explain why some people arrange things so they get as large a refund check as possible (I don’t make interest free loans to the gub’mint so I cut a check). But even though I can’t explain their attitudes toward what really is their own money, I think the fact that some people have that attitude does tell us something about why we’re in the predicament we’re in.

I’m all in favor of the “no more withholding” idea, with one caveat: enough people are completely unable to plan ahead that they will arrive at April 15th with no money in the bank to back that huge check they have to write.

To at least remind them of the huge upcoming check, it would be a good idea for every paycheck they get to include a notice saying “Of this paycheck of $X, you should put aside about $Y for next year’s taxes.” Where $Y = the amount that would have been withheld under the current system. There would still be plenty of people who fail to put aside enough for their taxes, but at least they wouldn’t have an excuse to whine about “But I didn’t knooooooooow!!!”

That soapbox had better have handrails and safety straps… I try to avoid high places since I recall then Gov. Reagan telling Californians that they should not have withholding of the state income taxes as it masked the cost of government. He said that taxes should hurt and writing a check every April would handle that nicely. He lost that battle with the CA legislature.

SPQR–a bunch of us talked about this over dinner and drinks tonight. None of us could come up with a single situation in American political history that compares to this. It really boggles the mind what a unmitigated`catastrophe (self imposed totally by the left) Obamacare is for our country.

Switch tax day to Oct. 15.
April to November, people can forget, be distracted by ads, and more.
2-3 weeks, and the cost will be fresh in their minds.

Add in eliminating all taxes, tariffs, fees, imposts, and whatever EXCEPT for an income tax, and the full cost will always be apparent, instead of lost in bits and pieces attached to other bills paid monthly or daily.

I’m all for renewable energy and clean air as long as it doesn’t increase the cost of gas or electricity, I don’t have to pay for it and they don’t build any of those freaking ugly bird killing wind turbines any place I can see them.

Agree with the no withholding idea. It’s very smart.
I’d also like to hear some dem explain how Obamacare can work, when it absolutely requires that the young and healthy sign up, but also provides that those same young and healthy can stay on their parents’ plan until they are 26?!

Honestly, it’s like we’re going back to leeches and bleeding, renewable energy didn’t meet our need three centuries ago, that’s why we had the Industrial Revolution, and the rest of this system is blinkered as well,

At the end of every year, the government should send out a form to all taxpayers, stating how much they had to pay and asking them whether they would like to pay more or less the next year. Some number of checkboxes between +10% and -10%. The weighted (by amount paid) average would be the income tax change for the next year.

BTW, there are more options for self-employed people to get their modified AGI down without actually making less. They might be better off getting a more expensive plan since they write off the entire amount from the MAGI, and this might allow a subsidy.

10. …enough people are completely unable to plan ahead that they will arrive at April 15th with no money in the bank to back that huge check they have to write.

Comment by Robin Munn (943082) — 10/27/2013 @ 5:53 pm

These are some of the people I was talking about back in #5. They consider their refund like a savings account they otherwise wouldn’t have. I never understood that; it’s like admitting you can’t manage your own money and you need Uncle Sugar to do it for you.

What I couldn’t understand even more are the people who really seem to be under the impression that their refund is something like a gift. Almost as if they had nothing to do with it.

Still, as I said, even though I don’t quite understand the phenomena I think it says something about how we got to this point.

For the first group at least I think the fact they couldn’t write the check would be something that would happen once.

I’m all in favor of the “no more withholding” idea, with one caveat: enough people are completely unable to plan ahead that they will arrive at April 15th with no money in the bank to back that huge check they have to write.

Withholding allowed them to apply income tax to the middle class. Without it only the well-off could be expected to comply. Is that a bug or a feature?

I’d like to hear them explain how you can increase demand for something by “giving” 30 million more people access to it. Then without adding a single doctor, hospital, or other health service provider to the system claim that costs will go down and access to those services will improve.

the Democrats burned up all their political capital in getting it passed and in violent rhetoric against GOP. They have nothing left to spend on repairing their failures.

Clearly you didn’t watch Donna Brazile and Howard Dean this morning on Stephanopolis, SPQR. There was no capital spent, no violent rhetoric, nothing because the public wanted this. And certainly, there are no failures whatsoever – including the websites. They are in strident denial and will remain so. Because that denial has become their reality.

@28– It’s worse than that. Those who think the refund is some kind of “funds from Heaven” (like manna). When asked about how much they paid in income tax they will respond that they did not pay any taxes, that they actually got money back. They fail to understand that the difference between the amount withheld and the refund they got is their money. If pressed, they cannot say what that amount was. There is no help for these people, and yet they vote.

“It doesn’t seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else,” said Harris, who is three months pregnant. “This increase is simply not affordable.”

Stupid dumbfuck liberal twit.

Who the FUCK did you think was going to eat the cost of this you dimwitted simpleton???

I think many of us have repeatedly underestimated President Obama’s ability to somehow get away with all he gets away with.

Over at PowerLine they pointed out that Ms. Harris thought it was just fine and dandy to take other people’s money to pay for someone else’s insurance, as long as she wasn’t the one having money taken away.

How does a 61 year old man get charged for maternity coverage? Does that mean the cumulative expected maternity charges get spread over everybody, regardless of their ability to get pregnant?

The tweets from 60 Minutes (at the L.I. link) are devastating. It took them a year to do their investigation.

If this gets the airplay it deserves and the rest of the MSM actually has the stones to report and investigate, etc, how do you think it will impact a potential presidential run by Hillary? Is her team scurrying around in a desperate attempt to quash and quiet? Are the Emily Listers on their fainting couches clutching their smelling salts as we speak?

They are shifting from claiming costs will come down…
The LA Times revisits their go to leftist health policy guy:
“This is when the actual sticker shock comes into play for people,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “There are winners and losers under the Affordable Care Act.”

Ah.
Sucks to be a loser. Good thing the unions got that waiver so the burden of bearing costs could be spread thinner.

I’m a loser too, but at least I didn’t vote for Obama and then become shocked that he lied AND I have to pay more for my human right to healthcare.

Lara Logan did the report. I think her credibility will give this more weight than if it had been someone not so well known, and not so admired. Devastating portion below,

We have learned there were two Delta Force operators who fought at the Annex and they’ve since been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross — two of the military’s highest honors. The Americans who rushed to help that night went without asking for permission and the lingering question is why no larger military response ever crossed the border into Libya — something Greg Hicks realized wasn’t going to happen just an hour into the attack.

Lara Logan: You have this conversation with the defense attache. You ask him what military assets are on their way. And he says–

Greg Hicks: Effectively, they’re not. And I — for a moment, I just felt lost. I just couldn’t believe the answer. And then I made the call to the Annex chief, and I told him, “Listen, you’ve gotta tell those guys there may not be any help coming.”

Lara Logan: That’s a tough thing to understand. Why?

Greg Hicks: It just is. We — for us, for the people that go out onto the edge, to represent our country, we believe that if we get in trouble, they’re coming to get us. That our back is covered. To hear that it’s not, it’s a terrible, terrible experience.

I think CBS is running this against football in order to get the whole thing out of the way to help Cankles. It will the old “this is old news and already covered by 60 minutes. Nothing to see here ploy”.
As usual

What I couldn’t understand even more are the people who really seem to be under the impression that their refund is something like a gift. Almost as if they had nothing to do with it.

For many of them it is. Because of various credits etc, it is entirely possible to not only pay no taxes, but to instead get a “refund” of money you never paid. I believe about 40% of “taxpayers” are in this category.

When all the ObamaCare stuff starts to get even worse — and it’s bound to get even worse — it would be a public service to round-up all the newspaper editorials from 2009-10 which supported the government taking control of our nation’s health care system. Remind the dumb lefty editorial boards that they were gung-ho for this fiasco, even when our side was warning about these very problems.

Why buy my mortgage? Why not just give me the deed free and clear? Wouldn’t that be even better for the economy?

In 2008 they could have bought down all the single-family mortgages by, say 10%, making the mortgage-backed securities market strong enough to muddle on without collapsing as it did.

The money would have gone to the same banks — as loan repayments — and provided the same liquidity. It just would have helped real people instead of jus the crooked bankers. They could have got it back by repealing the bap gains exclusion on house sales.

But instead of treating the cause, with the leverage working FOR you, they treated the back end symptoms and had all that leverage on the loss side. OF course, that would have required the folks in the capital to care a whit about the peasants in the provinces.

JD, that should be thrown back in Klein’s face every time he opens his pie-hole or sets his fingers to his keyboard in defense of ObamaCare. Kind of like the “no weapons of mass destruction were found!” cries from our friends on the left.

Regarding the Ezra Klein WaPo piece that JD linked to, here is what the very first commenter had to say about it:

Ezra, And what do you say to the 4 in 10 people in the indvidual market that will not receive subsidies? Don’t tell them that their premiums aren’t going to be higher. They are becasue they are going to be forced to buy a more generous plan, even if they don’t want one. There are a LOT of self-employed individuals out there that earn more than 3x or 4x poverty, and a lot of them would like to have catostraphic insurance policies ONLY. This bill eliminates that possibilty and the Dems once again stifle entrprenurship, risk-taking and innovation in this country.

Posted by: truth5 | December 1, 2009 12:33 PM | Report abuse

Wow, talk about prescience. Only thing this commenter missed was that even some people who qualify for subsidies will find their premium increase outstrips their subsidy.

I have opined that he may have been the most scrupulously honest president

He at least wouldn’t have been the ridiculously disreputable character that currently occupies the White House.

It wasn’t that long ago when I would have predicted that a person along the lines of Obama didn’t have a chance in hell of becoming president. That a majority of Americans had enough good sense to pick candidates who at least didn’t violate minimum standards. Wrong! So Obama really is bad fiction come to life. In that regards, he and this nation are sort of depicted metaphorically in this episode of a TV show from long ago.

So it’s not only true that most Americans will see their premiums go down, but it’s also true that most Americans will see their premiums go down even if you account for the better insurance plans they’ll be purchasing.

Delusion of the masses and funny enough many Conservatives knew it was a lie and were painted as Haters or whatever.

They’re making the case for Obama to unilaterally rewrite the law to fix these problems for the public good. He gets more than a line item veto – he gets a line item edit.

Congress is still needed not to write laws but to provide the executive with a minimum semblance of legitimacy.

Now all the remaining few in opposition in congress can do is continually use words such as illegitimate, usurpation, lawless, and tyrannical. They still have a small platform. Let’s see it vigorously used while it lasts.

It could be argued that our host’s proposal simply wouldn’t work; far too many people wouldn’t be able to save up enough to pay their taxes. But, given the way our government spending is completely out of control, I’d say that it’s difficult to argue that our current system of withholding works either.

Perhaps some form of system such as quarterly filing for everybody might help?

Can anyone point to the part of the law that regulates how much doctors can charge their patients? (Such as $10 for a doctor visit, $100 for a CAT scan, $1000 for chemotherapy, and $10,000 for a coronary bypass.)

Isn’t it interesting that any work, discussion or monies paid by Cabinet or Czar level employees are ‘protected’ and excluded from public view whereas anything communicated anywhere by anyone else in the world is fair game.

Maybe a compromise would be for the income tax to go into an escrow account, so the taxpayer would see actually how much of their money goes to the feds, while not getting into trouble for not paying their taxes.

Comment by Amphipolis (d3e04f) — 10/28/2013 @ 6:39 am
Indeed, he keeps overstepping the boundaries just waiting/daring for someone to try to stop him.
I wonder if Vegas is starting to make odds on whether or not he will try to run again.

It may also be a good idea to talk directly to the doctors. I had heard mixed reviews from doctors in the trenches with most having a dim view of the law. However a doctor did a fantastic video about what will happen to health care professionals and it is quite alarming http://obamacareaca.com/videos/

Just two things. The woman you said could keep her policy was told by her insurer that they were going to cancel her policy. How do you come to the conclusion that she can keep it?

Second, anybody can stop withholding. All they need to do is to give their payroll department a signed, dated and notarized statement saying that they do not give permission to withhold anything from their pay, and that their net pay is to equal their gross pay, to the penny. It’s perfectly legal. And the statement should also say that any withholding without written permission is in fact illegal conversion of property, which is in fact a felony, along with breach of fiduciary duty, just for starters. In fact, I’ve been doing this for the last twenty years. Try it. You’ll like it.

I agree about withholding. People are shocked when I point out they can take their “refund” during the year with a few simple calculations.

Washington seems so far away from us; I think this is why presidential elections are so poorly attended. The biggest mistake for the Dems in Obamacare is that people now can see how disastrous Washington can render their ordinary lives.

I forgot to add something. If your payroll department tries to tell you that they’re required to withhold, then they’re flat-out ignorant of the law, and you need to school them, as well as their legal counsel. There is no law in this country that requires companies to act as unpaid tax collection agents for the feds, or for anybody else. Tax collection is the job of “government,” NOT private companies.

As a matter of fact, when it comes to “income” taxes, or any other internal revenue taxes, the code itself states that before anybody can “owe” a tax, it must be assessed (Section 6201), the so-called “liability” of the so-called “taxpayer” must be recorded in the office of the Secretary (Section 6203), and a notice and demand for payment must be sent to the so-called “taxpayer” (Section 6303). Has anybody ever heard of this being done? Of course not. That’s because everybody goes along with this withholding swindle, and since they voluntarily allow the money to be taken without these procedures being implemented, by filling out W-4s and the like, which is NOT legally required of anybody, there’s no need for them to be implemented.

Maybe. Generally, plans that take effect for 2014 must meet the law’s requirements. But there’s a loophole in most states: if your insurer allows you to renew your current policy early — before Jan. 1 — you may be able to keep it for 12 more months without penalty.

A handful of states limit this option. Insurers selling plans on California’s state-run exchange, for instance, aren’t allowed to offer renewals of 2013 plans. So ask your insurer. And note that if you go this route, your plan won’t necessarily have the Affordable Care Act’s mandated benefits.

California law mandates the cancellationmof polcies, not the PPACA. Because the PPACA has a loophole – if the policy is renewed before midnight December 31, 2013, you can keep for (another year?) (the renewal period, even if longer than one year?)

Contact members of the Californis legislature – or would taht be a waste of time? Well, start now, if the website still malfunctioning after Thanksgiving, they might be amenable to changing the law, and if the legislature is not session, Governor Jerry brown might be amenable to calling it into special session.

I forgot to add something. If your payroll department tries to tell you that they’re required to withhold, then they’re flat-out ignorant of the law,

They are definitely required not to pocket the money, and I suppose you could say you don’t trust them, but I think normally you have to claim you would be exempt from income tax – don’t expect to owe any – to not have any withholding at all. It can certainly be done if the work is temporary and the amount being paid for teh whole year is low.

But besides that anyone can raise the number of exemptions, or add or subtract dollar amounts.

This rate of borrowing means for every $5 that is sent to Washington, Washington spends $7.81 for a pgain of 56.25% by routing the money through Washington. Interest is only 6% of outlays, so even subtracting the interest ($216 billion) that still leaves 30% or a gain of 42.28% or $5.00 in taxes ets you $7.14. This size of deficit, of course, is unsustainable, and must shrink to about $500 billion a year after subtracting interest (it’s now about a trillion) If interest artes stayed the same that would about $100 to $200 billion a year deficit, if it goes up, the primary budget might even have to be in surplus.

Inflation reduces the size of the debt in relation to GDP, but increases the annual deficit unless interets rates are kept down, as they were in the 1940s.

In my view the no withholding idea is misguided. You are tempting people to violate the tax laws and then punishing them when they do. So you are harming the improvident portion of the population without providing any particular benefit (that I can see) to the prudent. We should be making it easier for stupid people to live their lives not harder. Particularly in cases like this where this can be done without imposing any great burden on the more sensible.

I think the entire tax system should be replaced with a national sales tax on food, medicine, clothing, and housing at the consumer level, and on nothing else. Surefire receipts, little possibility of evasion, everybody needs those things. The government can also show generosity by generously refusing to tax people’s vegetable gardens and backyard chicken coops and turning a blind eye to guys digging through grocery store and restaurant dumpsters.

Let’s be sensible about this. If we want soldiers and firemen, we need to have taxes. So there will be taxes. From the point of view of taxpayers demanding accountability for their money — that 20% (or whatever) extra your meal is costing you will be “in your face” three times a day. Hmm, what say you?

If my employer didn’t withhold my income tax payments, I would set it up at the bank to put it into a separate account with each paycheck deposit. And I’d set it up so that I couldn’t touch it until April.

Then it’d all there waiting for me to happily hand it over to the government at tax time.

I might even choose my bank based on the kinds of products they offered to support my tax-paying requirements.

He calls Obama incompetent but from the comments one can see that the kossites are still in violent denial of realty. And Rall is pushihg for single payer. His hope is Sarah’s fear.That’s agreement? Not really.

They consider their refund like a savings account they otherwise wouldn’t have. I never understood that; it’s like admitting you can’t manage your own money and you need Uncle Sugar to do it for you.

People don’t save money in the bank for the interest. Especially in the last 25 years.

What’s going to happen, if this goes on, is that Obamacare is going to take away their refund and maybe even seem to require some people to write a check. Nobody seems to be getting into that much.

Of course, Congress may change the law and give back the refund.

People could lose mney for two reasons: 1) their advance tax credit turns out to have been too high when trued up, OR 2) they (or a family member who gets an exemption on the tax return) were missing at least 3 consecutive months of health insurance.

Maybe they’ll advance the earliest date for counting the 3 months, from January to March or April.

They consider their refund like a savings account they otherwise wouldn’t have. I never understood that; it’s like admitting you can’t manage your own money and you need Uncle Sugar to do it for you.

People don’t save money in the bank for the interest. Especially in the last 25 years.

Banks make it easy to do these days: you get your paycheck directly deposited — assuming that you still have a paycheck in the Obama economy — and you can either have part of it sent to a checking and part to a savings account, or you can have the bank sweep a designated amount from checking to savings at specified intervals.

And most companies of any size have 401(k) options which take a designated percentage of your gross and send it to an investment company, all to build retirement savings for you. There’s really very little actual work involved for the individual in saving money, and that means not very much excuse for not saving (beyond not making enough money to save anything).

We remodeled our kitchen this past year, and I borrowed $16,000 to pay for it; I borrowed it from my 401(k), so, in effect, I have been paying interest to myself for the loan. It took exactly one phone call to arrange this.

SPQR, I cited actual sections of the Code. “Theories?” You ignorant, state-worshiping stooges really get tiresome. Do you write for quatloos.com? What part of “I’ve been doing this for twenty years” don’t you understand?

Show me the law that requires any of these things or shut your stupid hole.

First, he notes that Krauthamer said he didn’t know who Obama really was until 5 weeks into office with the first SOTU.

Second, he notes a communication from some Dem strategist saying the Dems are in trouble because of the actual ObamaCare premiums and such, and complains, “Why didn’t Obama tell the truth?”

Of course, El Rushbo can’t understand how people were so ignorant when it should have been obvious.

Then third, know we we are told that President Obama didn’t know about the NSA eavesdropping on world leaders…
To summarize (paraphrase), “He didn’t know about Fast and Furious, he didn’t know about Benghazi, he didn’t know about ObamaCare, and now he didn’t know what the NSA was doing…Does he know that he is president???”

Of course, what really riles Majarushie is that all of these media and Dems are worried about what the ObamaCare debacle will mean for the Dem party and the reputation of the media folk,
people worried about the consequences for the American people? Not so much…

I asked about this before,
what does it mean that a 61 yo man has to pay for maternity coverage?
That expected maternity costs for all insured women of childbearing age is spread across all insured equally, including males and non-childbearing age women?

I saw the same thing from my “Obama side”, a doctor, yesterday. A week ago, she would not brook a word against Obamacare. Yesterday, she could only say, “It will still be good for doctors. More people will be able to go to the doctor when they need to.” She knew it was not true the minute she said it. She worked in a lot of comprehensive ERs, and took a lot of calls on the floor and in her specialties, to know that nobody who needed medical care was denied it because of inability to pay. She agreed with me (and I’m afraid she’ll need to seek treatment for it), that you cannot insure 40 million “affordably” without doing it on the backs of those already affordably insured.

12. Employment Tax Evasion. The IRS has seen a number of illegal schemes that instruct employers not to withhold federal income tax or other employment taxes from wages paid to their employees. Such advice is based on an incorrect interpretation of Section 861 and other parts of the tax law and has been refuted in court. Recent cases have resulted in criminal convictions, and the courts have issued injunctions against more than a dozen persons ordering them to stop promoting the scheme. Employer participants can also be held responsible for back payments of employment taxes, plus penalties and interest. It is worth noting that employees who have nothing withheld from their wages are still responsible for payment of their personal taxes.

basically saying the chances of the right taking the senate are reducing to a very low order while the possibility of the left taking the house are growing (still small, but growing). Rothenberg and Cook seem to be on the same page.

Congress should pass a law mandating that Tlaloc purchase a computer—even if he doesn’t want to buy one.
That way, he can join in on our reindeer games on the weekends, and not have to wait until Monday to tell us how stupid we are. Or whatever.

Tlaloc – Interesting you seem so focused on polling which can be gamed so easily rather than substance or policy. Did you see the poll in which 60% thought the 404Care rollout was a joke?

Polling gives you a sense of public opinion. A, well, rather large number of embarrassing moments for the right have come about precisely because they had no idea the state of public opinion.

If you like be pantsed repeatedly by the dems you certainly may continue. On the other hand if you’d like to actually maybe win occasionally it might help if you knew the ‘lay of the land’ as it were.

Your call.

(as for public impression of the roll out, I have not seen that poll but it wouldn’t surprise me. On the other hand I think you are most likely reading way too much into it. Do you see a lot of those “pentium happens” bumper stickers still around? Not so much.)

A delay in the individual mandate that the Democrats called Republicans “terrorists” for including in a CR just days before.

Your clown act is hilarious, Tlaloc.

Meanwhile, the emails I’m getting from a Democrat Senator up for reelection in 2014 show a desire to run away from Obamacare today.

And when tens of millions more people are uninsured in late 2014 than were in 2009, and middle class voters are seeing a 30% jump in insurance premiums, that’s when the Democrat party crashes into a smoking hole.

Congress should pass a law mandating that Tlaloc purchase a computer—even if he doesn’t want to buy one.
That way, he can join in on our reindeer games on the weekends, and not have to wait until Monday to tell us how stupid we are. Or whatever.

I try to spend as much time as I can with my family on the weekends as I get very little time during the week. This is unlikely to change no matter how much you miss me in the interim.

“Dem Party is F****d.” That was the subject line of an email sent to me Sunday by a senior Democratic consultant with strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill. The body of the email contained a link to this Los Angeles Times story about Obamacare “sticker shock:”

…The Democratic consultant said none of this is news to him, but he wonders why Obama wasn’t honest with Americans. He predicted surprise and outrage over higher costs and lesser coverage. “We will own this problem forever,” the Democrat wrote.

Ooh, yeah, this is confirmation bias. Clearly that senior Democratic party consultant doesn’t believe your BS about the polling, either.

From the link:
As UCLA Public Policy expert Dr. Gerald F. Kominski told CBS News this week, “Half of the 14 million people who buy insurance on their own are not going to keep the policies they previously had.”
Hey, only 7 million people will directly know Obama lied to them.

That includes 56-year-old Dianne Barrette. Last month, she received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield informing her as of January 2014, she would lose her current plan. Barrette pays $54 a month. The new plan she’s being offered would run $591 a month — 10 times more than what she currently pays.

Barrette said, “What I have right now is what I am happy with and I just want to know why I can’t keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else?”

According to HealthCare.gov, Barrette is eligible for some subsidies, CBS News’ Jan Crawford pointed out on “CBS This Morning.” But Barrette told CBS News she has no idea what those subsidies would be because she cannot log on to the website — an issue U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is sure to be asked about when she testifies on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

You mean getting our information from right-wing, inside-the-bubble news sources like the LAT, CBS, NBC, or the NYT?

The point of confirmation bias is you listen and accept every story that says the PPACA is crashing and burning while ignoring and forgetting the stories that say the opposite and hence end up with a skewed view that poorly matches reality.

Notice the other day when I mentioned the state run echanges were getting positive reviews no one here had a clue what I meant. They’d simply glossed over those stories as if they didn’t exist.

Tlaloc, you are lying again. When you mentioned “state run exchanges are getting positive reviews”, we had a clue what you meant. We ridiculed you for misrepresenting the contents of the Reason piece you linked to, you flaming liar.

While he’s occupying space in some grad school somewhere and contemplating how he’ll pay off his student loans, our friend Tlaloc might want to take a few courses on polling and opinion panels to better understand why most of us here do not take him seriously.

Hint: it’s the wording of the questions and the authenticity of the responders and the info revealed in the crosstabs that count if an organization really wants to ferret out where Americans stand on any policy issue. To which poll are you referring, Tlaloc, and who commissioned it?

Tlaloc, you are lying again. When you mentioned “state run exchanges are getting positive reviews”, we had a clue what you meant. We ridiculed you for misrepresenting the contents of the Reason piece you linked to, you flaming liar.

You ridiculed me for educating you? Actually that does sound sadly accurate. You are amazingly hostile to learning more about the world in which you (tenuously) live.

Let me know when the generic ballot falls from dem +6 or 8. Let me know when the GOP gets back to a 50-50 chance to take the senate. In short, let me know when any eternal measure of reality agrees with your fantasy scenario.

While he’s occupying space in some grad school somewhere and contemplating how he’ll pay off his student loans, our friend Tlaloc might want to take a few courses on polling and opinion panels to better understand why most of us here do not take him seriously.

Hint: it’s the wording of the questions and the authenticity of the responders and the info revealed in the crosstabs that count if an organization really wants to ferret out where Americans stand on any policy issue. To which poll are you referring, Tlaloc, and who commissioned it?

Elissa, please. You guys went through all this in 2012, how’d that work out for you?

To answer you last question I linked to the RCP page which aggregates all the polls on the subject. I’m not cherry picking one result, I’m looking at the trend across all the polls.

Yeah ecept for the part where he was wrong. Except for that you are spot on. Look tell you what, we can just take it as a given that every time I bring you guys information like manna from heaven at least one of you will make a completely farcical attempt to debunk what I said.

Deal?

That way you can stop bringing up such things and pretending they do anything more than prompt me to destroy another strawman. See my last 10 posts in this thread for examples.

A new Census Bureau report says that there are more people on welfare, then in full-time employment.
As far as Obama and his Marxist sycophant Tlaloc are concerned, it means they are undoubtedly…winning !

I asked about this before, what does it mean that a 61 yo man has to pay for maternity coverage? That expected maternity costs for all insured women of childbearing age is spread across all insured equally, including males and non-childbearing age women?
Comment by MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/28/2013 @ 11:24 am

119. Rush Limbaugh also said Politico said he was right, not wrong as some otherrs said, about not having to pay the Obamacare penalty if you weren’t going to get a refund. They claimed he was half-wrong because the treasry says it will charge interest (but apparently no penalty)

Tlacoc – Sure, at a given point in time and is highly sensitive to the composition of the sample and the way the questions are asked. That is why I believe you are putting way too much emphasis on current polling as a predictor of future events.

Let’s examine events over the past several weeks, the duration of the poll averages you cited in your original post on this thread, which could have had an impact on the poll outcomes.

How about the relentless hammering of Republicans by the Democrat media industrial complex over the defunding or delay of Unaffordable 404Care and the government slowdown precipitated by Obama’s hissy fit? Add to that the daily demagoguery from congressional Democrats and President Gutsy Call dumping on Republicans and proclaiming the wonders of government healthcare and it seems plain except to low information voters unable to think for themselves why polls have temporarily moved in the direction they have.

I don’t know – maybe you ned to find the web site where he got it from, but the only poll that seems to show some kind of again is the Fox news poll *, which showed a below average approval rate in its October 1/2 poll.

FOX News* 10/1 – 10/2 952 RV 36 52 Against/Oppose +16

FOX News* 10/20 – 10/22 1020 RV 41 51 Against/Oppose +10

So Obamacare, in this poll, moves from 16 points against to 10 points against. That’s Tlaloc’s gain. Not one poll shows a net positive opinion of Obamacare.

There were a few in late June and early July.

It might be the difference only is, that supporters are a bit more likely now to snaser the survey.

“Approval can’t be going up, unless some people are just finding out about Obamacare.”

Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/28/2013 @ 12:34 pm

Sammy – Sure it can. They are just thinking what they are told to think and confirming that they have no objection to being blatantly lied to by the Lightbringer.

That won’t last. Ok, there are some people who maybe diudn’t have astrong opinion, AND are ready to accept whatever Obama says, but there’s a limited supply of them, and then experience and taslking to other people, reduces support.

The old polls used to ask the question of those who said their opinion was unfavorable:

Is your opposition to Obamacare based on it being “too liberal” or “not liberal enough?” Or an equivalent idea. And about one third would agree it is not liberal enough, whatever that means.

Obamacare coming under severe attack from the right could cause a small percentage to say their opinion was favorable, while if they had been asked before, they would have said unfavorable.

Sam@186–it was a challenge to Tlaloc’s BS– not a request for you to go do his homework for him. Aggregate poll data on policy may indeed contain results of many polls that used similar words or asked questions to interest groups about related issues over weeks or months, but they compare apples to oranges to aardvarks and are not meaningful to serious poll geeks. Aggregate polls such as RCP’s that over time measure trends of voter approval/interest between specific candidates or between generic candidates may be more useful.

I know, I know. It’s going to be positively SHOCKA to learn that Tlaloc was lying about how great the state exchanges are.

Oh and, to date, the tally for the state of Oregon is:
100% of ‘enrollees’ enrolled in Medicaid,
0 (NOT ‘zero-point-something’ percent; ZERO, as in “not even ONE person”) enrolled in a private health plan.

Icy – It is like that, to differing degrees, across the country. Kentucky, which is hailed as a “success” has approx 26,000 enrolled, and approx 21,000 of them are expanded Medicaid.

That math will not work for ObamaCare. The most conservative estimate I saw was that 50% of enrollees needed to be actual paying policies, and again, a specific mix of old and young within that. That does not even begin to take into account how the massive Medicaid expansion will blow up State and Federal budgets, over time. It is front loaded to be all Federal dollars, but once that period is over, it will be all on the State, and it will hurt.

Can anyone point to the part of the law that regulates how much doctors can charge their patients? (Such as $10 for a doctor visit, $100 for a CAT scan, $1000 for chemotherapy, and $10,000 for a coronary bypass.)
Comment by Michael Ejercito (b371e1) — 10/28/2013 @ 6:56 am

Pushing price controls again? It doesn’t work and you’ve been told why over and over.

The tally in Oregon is:
56,000 new Medicaid enrollees
34 paper applications processed (meaning ‘checked to see if they qualify for subsidies’) — because the state-exchange website has been down from the beginning — with no confirmed private insurance enrollee(s).

Can anyone point to the part of the law that regulates how much doctors can charge their patients? (Such as $10 for a doctor visit, $100 for a CAT scan, $1000 for chemotherapy, and $10,000 for a coronary bypass.)
Comment by Michael Ejercito (b371e1) — 10/28/2013 @ 6:56 am

Icy,
Michael is a big fan of government forcing price controls on nearly all (maybe all?) areas of commerce. Because they’ve worked so well in the past … and freedom, or something.
Comment by Stashiu3 (e7ebd8) — 10/28/2013 @ 2:27 pm

– Okay, but when he says “regulates how much doctors can charge their patients? Such as $10 for a doctor visit, etc.” Is he referring to insurance copays? or, the actual charges levied by medical providers?
Because, if it’s the latter, then he is insane.

JD, Tlaloc knew he’d been schooled in his linking of the Reason article. But that does not discourage liars from trying to just brazen it out. Tlaloc misrepresented in the very next comment what I wrote and what happened just the day before.

One: The sections of the Code that I cited were not out of context, since they relate to any internal revenue tax that would be withheld from anybody’s pay.

Two: Although you at least knew about 26 USC 3401, that section deals with definitions. It plainly states that the definitions of “wages,” “employer” and “employee” all relate to people who work in some capacity for the US government, as well as the US government itself. It does not apply to anybody who works in the private sector, and it does not apply to any company in the private sector. Any attempt by you to deny what is plainly written in black in white will stamp you as what you plainly are: a government shill.

I’m done. The only person who argues with an idiot, much less a government Kool-Aid drinking idiot, is a bigger idiot. Bye now.

Big M., utterly false. The code section your cited was to the powers of the IRS to execute assessments. You are utterly clueless on the structure of the IRC.

Secondly, I did not cite 26 USC 3401. I cited 26 USC 3401 et seq. That means section 3401 and the following sections. 3401 contains definitions. 3402 states the actual requirement that an employer withholds and provides authority for the IRS to create tables of withholding. 3403 makes the employer liable for the amounts to be withheld, etc. And the definition of employer and employee are not limited to those working for the US government.

Tax protestors really are bizarre. They copy each others incoherent misstatements and outright fraudulent inventions of a mish mash of case law and statutes until they have an incoherent mess and proclaim that they have some great legal argument.

Its all nonsense.

When I was bored and stressed at law school a couple decades ago, I used to enjoy going on USENET news groups and ridiculing tax protestors by actually finding the crap that they were citing. I would find things like case opinions where the protestor had left out words like ” … not …” that reversed the meaning. Really brazen fraud like that.

The closely related “soverign citizen” nuts who think that quoting section 1 of the Uniform Commercial Code suddenly made them immune to Federal law were just as loony and just as hilarious.

When I was a kid, just starting at my first job (1954), I was told about an employer who objected to withholding, as did many of his employees,
and set up a demonstration (this story could be apocryphal):
Payday came and everyone lined up at the PAY table, and received their pay, in Cash, in an envelope.
Then they went to the next table, where they paid their Income Tax;
Then to the third table to pay their FICA;
etc., etc.
The IRS was not happy and shut that down quick.
Strange, but in the military in the 60′s, there were situations where you were paid just like that
(absent having to payback your proper witholding)
but they had the table there to collect club dues, laundry fees, porter fees, etc.